Disability Discrimination Is a Social Problem Which Can Be Cured the Way Jim Crow Was Cured

Another six months of Monica, have mercy; I don't care if it harelips the Governor. - Molly Ivins, Time.com

Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity - Erving Goffman

There's case law out there regarding people commenting and gesturing against race and religion. But ... there's nothing out there regarding disabilities. - Assistant City Prosecutor Jennifer Fitsimmons

They have chosen [violence] even when it was merely likely to promote their social standing. - Heather Horn

A human being whose life is nurtured in an advantage which has accrued from the disadvantage of other human beings, and who prefers that this should remain as it is, is a human being by definition only. - James Agee

The stigmatized person is outside of society, and this means that nothing works anymore.

It is as if the Civil Rights Revolution never happened.

The point of the Civil Rights Act, . . . was to smash that [Jim Crow] social system. - Matthew Yglesias

What follows are observations, interspersed with comments (treated as "anonymous" even when they aren't) found on other weblogs:

Heather Horn - Most humans, [Sönke] Neitzel and [Harald] Welzer suggest, are capable of brutality: it's just a question of what the social setting they are put in encourages. ...
They have chosen [violence] even when it was merely likely to promote their social standing. ...
[Neitzel and Welzer's book] Soldaten argues that German soldiers were not in fact different types of humans than we are. They weren't "bad for society" because they were insufficiently human, in other words; they became bad for humanity because of the society they were living in.

Sarah Marie Love commented on the comments to her post: Hi guys, thnaks for all your great comments. Sorry I havn't replied to you all. I gave up writing my blog after serious depression, but hope to carry it on now I'm recovering. Writing is such a big deal for me, especially when I am feeling inspired and in need of an outlet. I hope you are all well and everything is going your way in life. Never give up on life or feel intimidated by other people, after all they are the ones with the problem, not you.

Bob Wright: I think that, though we're not naturally racist, we're naturally "groupist." Evolution seems to have inclined us to readily define whole groups of people as the enemy, after which we can find their suffering, even death, very easy to countenance and even facilitate.
But when it comes to defining this enemy--defining the "out group"--people are very flexible. The out group can be defined by its language, its religion, its skin color, its jersey color. (And jersey color can trump skin color--just watch a brawl between one racially integrated sports team and another.) It all depends on which group we consider (rightly or wrongly) in some sense threatening to our interests.

[The first of several comments from Sarah Marie Love's post above] Anonymous - Hi Sarah just read your amazing article on your life. I was born with a cleft lip and palate and so my mother gave me away because she didn't know how to take care of me. But I was adopted by a great family when I was not even a few months old. And they took the time to get me a good doctor to fix my cleft lip and i had to undergo many surgical producers growing up. I was constantly tease time and time again in elementary school. I would cry many nights and talk to my mother about why god made me like this. And my mother would always tell me that god has a reason for everything. So i wish you the best and everything. 

Joe Fassler - James Agee's great depression essay: "And a human being whose life is nurtured in an advantage which has accrued from the disadvantage of other human beings, and who prefers that this should remain as it is, is a human being by definition only, having much more in common with the bedbug, the tapeworm, the cancer, and the scavengers of the deep sea."

Anonymous - i am 14 years old and i was born with a cleft lip (i know it's palate, but my friends call it lip for short). contrary to karen, i was never bullied, and i have never had any problems. i currently have a very pretty girlfriend named lauren. we forget about it and we joke around with it also, im always open to discussion about it any time. have thoughts fill up their heads "dont be embarrased, dont be afraid". its ok, we are humans too, and if you know how to take jokes and hard comments, you can have fun with your life. :) and <3 to all those young children with cleft lips out there. 

Summary

• Heather Horn suggested that most humans are capable of brutality if the social setting they are in encourages it. "They have chosen [violence] even when it was merely likely to promote their social standing."
• Sarah Marie Love mentions "serious depression" in passing and counsels: "Never give up on life or feel intimidated by other people, after all they are the ones with the problem, not you."
• Bob Wright suggests a social tendency to cast those not in our group as enemies: "Evolution seems to have inclined us to readily define whole groups of people as the enemy, after which we can find their suffering, even death, very easy to countenance and even facilitate."
• The first anonymous commenter said, "I was constantly tease time and time again in elementary school. I would cry many nights and talk to my mother about why god made me like this."
• James Agee had sharp words for "a human being whose life is nurtured in an advantage which has accrued from the disadvantage of other human beings, and who prefers that this should remain as it is."
• The second anonymous commenter counseled "'dont be embarrased, dont be afraid'. its ok, we are humans too, and if you know how to take jokes and hard comments, you can have fun with your life.

"I don't care if it harelips the Governor," above, describes an omnipresent social pathology that the "Governor," in this hypothetical case, can't get away from. To choose words from the preceding summary, he will be subject to "brutality," "violence" "intimida[tion]," "suffering," "teas[ing]," "cry many nights," "embarrass[ment]," "jokes," and "hard comments."

Worse, for the "Governor" a stigmatizing disability means what Goffman, above, calls a "spoiled identity." He is outside of society, and this means that nothing works anymore. For him, it is as if the Civil Rights Revolution never happened. Here in twenty-first century America, he is still in a Jim Crow situation.


In a recent article Matthew Yglesias describes the way an earlier pathological social system was "smashed":

But instead of voting, African-Americans were disenfranchised via a systematic campaign of terrorist violence. The same campaign that gave us the Jim Crow social system. The point of the Civil Rights Act, including its provisions regulating private businesses, was to smash that social system. And it succeeded. It succeeded enormously. The amazing thing about retrospective opposition to the Civil Rights Act is that we know that it worked. It didn't lead to social and economic cataclysm.